Stanford Women’s Basketball Drops ACC Tournament Opener Against Clemson

For the first time ever, the Stanford Cardinal women’s basketball team (16-14, 8-10 ACC) took part in the ACC postseason tournament as the No. 11 seed, taking on the No. 14 seed Clemson Tigers (14-16, 6-12 ACC) on Wednesday afternoon in Greensboro, South Carolina. Unfortunately for the Cardinal, things did not go as planned, going home with a 63-46 loss.

That defeat eliminates them from the ACC tournament, and potentially ends their season.

Despite scoring the game’s first six points and Clemson not scoring until there was 5:27 left on the clock in the first quarter, the Tigers really got going, taking a 27-16 lead into halftime and holding the Cardinal to just 3-for-13 shooting from the floor in the second quarter.

By quarter, Stanford was able to put up just ten points in the first, then six in the second after going 6-for-26 (23.1%) from the floor.

To start the second half, Tess Heal made a three pointer for Stanford, getting them within seven points in the third quarter. However, very soon after, the Tigers took over with a 12-0 run that lasted around two minutes and included four three-point shots.

Courtney Ogden led Stanford with 13 points and shot 6-of-10, but aside from her big game, Stanford was unable to get much from anybody else. Shooting only 31.5% as a team, the Cardinal connected on only 17-of-54 shots from the field, which was their second worst shooting game this season. After Ogden, Chloe Clardy had seven points.

Nunu Agara was able to play some minutes in this one, after being out of action for most of the past month, logging 17 minutes and accounting for eight points, three rebounds, and two steals.

Now out of the ACC tournament, a trip to March Madness now is most likely out of the question for Stanford. If that is the case, it would snap a streak of nearly 40 straight seasons of playing in the NCAA tournament. With the brackets for the NCAA tournament and the WNIT being released on Sunday, March 16, the Cardinal will await their fate and hope that they qualify for at least the WNIT.

The ACC tournament will continue on Thursday, with No. 14 Clemson taking on No. 6 Louisville, as well as No. 7 Cal taking on No. 10 Virginia as the late games for the day.